Fight Like Apes (also referred to as FLApes or FLA) are an Irish alternative rock band formed in Dublin in 2006. Their members are Mary-Kate "MayKay" Geraghty (vocals and synth), Jamie "Pockets" Fox (keyboard and vocals), Tom Ryan (bass) and Adrian Mullan (drums). They are known for their elongated record titles, usually inspired by B movies. They have released two EPs, How Am I Supposed to Kill You If You Have All the Guns? and David Carradine is a Bounty Hunter Whos Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch (both in 2007), and one album, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion (2008). In 2009, they released an EP for the American market titled You Filled His Head with Fluffy Clouds and Jolly Ranchers, What Did You Think Was Going to Happen?.

Fight Like Apes have toured the UK with The Von Bondies, The Ting Tings, The Prodigy and Kasabian and have played several Irish and European festivals throughout their career. They have appeared on several television shows in Ireland, including Tubridy Tonight, WeTV, The View, Other Voices and The Cafe. They have also had some success in Asia, where they have been signed up by Sony Music Entertainment Japan for an album release on that continent in April 2009. The band have been nominated for five Meteor Music Awards, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion was nominated for the Choice Music Prize and Fight Like Apes were named the fourth best Irish musical act of their generation by The Irish Times in 2009.

Formation

Fight Like Apes formed late 2006 when Mary-Kate Geraghty (known as "MayKay"), a former choir singer, and her friends, Jamie Fox (known as "Pockets"), Adrian Mullan and Tom Ryan, all of whom had experience in other bands, came together. MayKay and Pockets first met as teenagers on holiday in Spain where they realised they both went to nearby schools and shared the same "extremely optimistically cynical outlook on life". When MayKay told Pockets she loved singing he had her sign a contract on a piece of tissue in a bar which bound them together legally. Pockets's parents were unhappy with their son's "disgusting" taste in music. He dropped out of his final year of study at Dublin City University and a potential career in journalism to pursue his musical career. MayKay had been studying medicinal chemistry, and later a philosophy course at Trinity College Dublin. They habitually met from early morning and spent their days eating together before deciding to form a band. Their chosen name was inspired by Caesar's battle cry of “Now fight like apes” in the self-described "notoriously bad" Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Early EPs (2007)

Their debut EP, How Am I Supposed to Kill You If You Have All the Guns?, released by Irish indie label FIFA Records in early 2007, sold out and generated a significant amount of interest in the media and in the Irish blogging community in the process. In May 2007, Fight Like Apes won Phantom FM's Topman Unsigned Band Search; their prize was to be a support act of The Holloways at show in Dublin. Fight Like Apes played both Electric Picnic (their first major Irish festival) and Hard Working Class Heroes in 2007 and also performed at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York. They were also chosen to play the Futureshock stage at EXIT in Serbia after sending a demo of their songs to the organisers. On 13 October 2007, Fight Like Apes performed "Jake Summers" on television chat show, Tubridy Tonight. The title of their second EP, David Carradine is a Bounty Hunter Whos Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch, released on 2 November 2007, was inspired by the film Future Force starring David Carradine, which the band found on the internet. The EP's lead track, "Do You Karate?", was a minor hit on the Irish independent music scene. The band set off on their first UK tour after the EP's release and their "Jake Summers" single was released there through the label, Cool For Cats (sister of Fierce Panda). In February 2008, the band toured Ireland and the UK as a support act of The Von Bondies. Von Bondies member Jason Stollsteimer has described Fight Like Apes as “candy wrapped in barbed wire”. Fight Like Apes were invited to participate in the sixth series of RTÉ's annual Other Voices music show, performing on 19 March 2008. They also appeared on RTÉ Two's WeTV television show. Fight Like Apes performed at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas in 2008. Upon their return from South by Southwest in March/April 2008, they went on a national tour of Ireland. Later that year, Fight Like Apes appeared at several music festivals in Ireland and the UK, including an appearance on the Futures Stage at T in the Park, and two appearances at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival, as well as Oxegen 2008 and Indie-pendence in Ireland. The single "Lend Me Your Face/Lightsabre Cock-sucking Blues" was released in the UK on 21–28 July 2008.

Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion (2008)

The band spent a month in Seattle, Washington, in early 2008, recording tracks for their debut album, produced by John Goodmanson. The album, titled Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, was released on 26 September 2008 on Model Citizen Records, selling continually well in Ireland and the UK. It was preceded by the release of the single "Something Global" on 11 July 2008. They played a sold-out launch show at Whelan's in Dublin, which was broadcast live on Phantom FM on the day of release. The Irish Times described the album as an "astonishing debut that encompasses melancholy and whimsy (both lyrically and musically)". The Irish Independent, on the other hand, "strongly urge[d] all not to waste their money" on "the woeful debut" of a band with "lots of blogger and media friends, all aurally challenged". RTÉ also gave the album a lukewarm response. MayKay has said she is unbothered by any criticism as long as the album is simply being reviewed. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion reached the top five of the Irish Albums Chart, meaning the band became the first alternative act from Ireland to achieve this for several years, and "Jake Summers" and "Lend Me Your Face" became regularly played at indie clubs throughout Ireland.

They went on to support The Ting Tings on a sell-out UK tour, receiving kung fu lessons from their security guard Preston and a champagne bottle on the final night. They appeared on The Cafe on 16 October 2008. The Prodigy personally invited the band to support them on their already sold-out arena tour of the UK; all of the members are fans of Fight Like Apes and Liam Howlett entered their dressing room to give his regards. Sony Music Entertainment Japan signed the band for the Asian release of Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion. They headlined the Levi's One to Watch Tour in November 2008. In December 2008, a video of students of the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, featuring several females miming to "Digifuckers", was released.

Eurosonic, UK, US and Japan (2009)

Fight Like Apes represented Ireland in the Eurosonic Festival in Groningen, the Netherlands, in January 2009, This appearance led to the band qualifying for admission into the European Talent Exchange Programme, allowing the band to be booked for music festivals across Europe, including Glastonbury and T in the Park. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion was released in the UK on 26 January 2009. The band played a studio session for Steve Lamacq of BBC Radio 1 around this time, with Maykay also encountering Jonathan Ross, a fan of the band who has played their music on his show. They released a video for a new single, "Tie Me Up with Jackets", later that month and performed the song on The View on 10 March 2009. Also In March 2009, came the release of the EP You Filled His Head with Fluffy Clouds and Jolly Ranchers, What Did You Think Was Going to Happen? for the US market as well as a return to South by Southwest.

Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion was released in Japan in April 2009, with Fight Like Apes filming a music video for the international release of their "Something Global" single in Whelan's, Dublin. On 3 April 2009, The Irish Times named Fight Like Apes the fourth best contemporary Irish musical act, above Lisa Hannigan and below Cathy Davey, Jape and David Holmes. The newspaper claimed that "Ireland has, quite simply, never seen a band like Fight Like Apes", reasoning that this was due to them "acting as a palette-cleansing antidote to the dour “woolly jumper brigade” that dragged Irish music into the depths of despair not a decade ago". They played at the 2009 Trinity Ball in May, an event likened to "a mini-Oxegen without the mud". The band's 2009 summer tour consisted of both domestic and European festival dates, and an appearance in Wales. Their performance at Festival Internacional de Benicàssim in Spain was cancelled due to a fire and extreme winds. Their performance at Oxegen 2009 was their second at the festival, with band members banging chairs during their performance and The Irish Times tipping them to appear on the Main Stage in 2010.

BBC Radio 1's Steve Lamacq has described Fight Like Apes as a "great Misfit band" inhabiting "a lonely place out on the periphery of the indie rock world". At one show in June 2008, he witnessed them "thrash about on their guitars and keyboards and wotnot [sic] like it's some kind of pop exorcism" and saw them "rolling around the empty dancefloor playflighting [sic]". Today FM presenter Alison Curtis has described them as "really talented... kind of rocky and metallic and their front girl is extremely watchable, almost going into Debbie Harry territory".

The band's influences include B movies, computer games, kung-fu and wrestling. "Do You Karate?", "a thumping bass driven flourish of a song", displays the band's "trademark twin-synth attack" and the Pixies-style "Canhead" has been described as "a concise ode to fish and chips". Musically they are fond of My Bloody Valentine, Mclusky and Tom Waits, Grand Pocket Orchestra, Adebisi Shank, Jape and Giveamanakick. They dislike guitars and have been known to perform with kitchen implements such as pots and pans when on stage; MayKay and Pockets even play keyboards with their heads. They purposefully construct lengthy record titles to "piss off" journalists and radio presenters and their self-defined "karate rock" genre was directed at the NME after the British magazine tried to place them in the same category as two other female-fronted bands.

Vocalist MayKay has been described as one of Ireland's "most mesmerising front women" in recent history, with her long black hair and banshee wail provoking male fans to confess simultaneous feelings of terror and attraction online. She is known to vociferate lyrics such as "you're like Kentucky Fried Chicken but without the taste" and "you’re a fucking disappointment to the human race", taken from the song "Jake Summers", a song inspired by a pornographic actor and a character from California Dreams. Pockets writes most of the band's songs, plays the keyboard and provides vocals for some of the band's songs. Adrian and Tom tend to remain in the background, choosing not to be photographed. The band have never written anything fictional and their lyrics have been described by Nadine O'Regan in The Sunday Business Post as "occasionally literally gynaecological in their detail and regularly relatively shocking in their honesty". MayKay and Pockets claim that most of their lyrics are shaped by one person who has broken each of their hearts. All of the band apart from the drummer are known for their consumption of alcohol, with MayKay even drinking wine during interviews and Pockets drinking Buckfast prior to performances.

EPs

• How Am I Supposed to Kill You If You Have All the Guns? (2007)
• David Carradine is a Bounty Hunter Whos Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch (2007)
• You Filled His Head with Fluffy Clouds and Jolly Ranchers, What Did You Think Was Going to Happen? (2009)

Studio albums

• Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion (2008)

Choice Music Prize

The band's's debut album, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, was nominated for the Choice Music Prize in January 2009. The award was won by Jape for the album Ritual on 4 March 2009.

Meteor Music Awards

Fight Like Apes were nominated for two Meteor Awards in 2008, one for Best Irish Live Performance for their November 2007 show at Whelan's in Dublin and the other for Best Irish Band. In 2009, they were nominated for three Meteor Music Awards, for Best Irish Band, Best Irish Live Performance and Best Irish Album.

• Official site
• FLApes Forums
• Fight Like Apes at MySpace
• Video at Glastonbury Festival (2008)
• Video interview with Jenny Huston from RTÉ 2fm at Oxegen 2008.
• Diary at South by Southwest in 2008 (subscription required)
• Video on Other Voices (2008)
• Video on Tubridy Tonight (2007)
• Feature in Spin
• Photos at Camden Crawl
• Fight Like Apes PR in Ireland